by Dave Duncan
And when at last the blood-soaked narrative drew to its close with the youngest and most junior of the raiders, who turned out to be the oversized Vurjuk, the baby giant who so much reminded Rap of his boyhood friend Katharkran. For the finale, Jalon had saved a famous feat of arms attributed to the ancient jotunn hero Stoneheart. Legend told how Stoneheart had pursued three mighty foes up a great tree and there hacked them to pieces, so that when he departed the branches were all decorated with severed limbs and organs and the grass around was drenched with blood. In Jalon's version there were six enemies, not three, and all were dismembered single-handedly in midair by young Vurjuk and his ax. The sailors screamed with joy, rolling around in their mirth, while the juvenile champion turned an excited fiery red and cheered with the rest of them, quite willing to pretend that every word of this had really happened.
The sky was dark, but the wind held, and Blood Wave sailed on. Long into the night Jalon had to keep repeating his masterpiece, over and over, until it seemed as if all the raiders had come to accept that things had actually happened exactly as he said. In the end they were congratulating one another, and especially complimenting the boy champion who had slaughtered six men single-handed, in a tree.
In some ways they were like children, Rap decided, oddly incomplete. It was not bloodlines that made them monsters, for he knew many decent, likable jotnar—like many of his former shipmates on Stormdancer, or like Kratharkran, who'd apprenticed to his uncle the farrier. Nor was it climate, for Krasnegar was every bit as cold and bleak as Nordland itself. It could only be custom. In other circumstances Vurjuk might have made a very fine blacksmith, and were Kratharkran here and a proud member of Kalkor's crew, then likely he also would be striving to be a man as they were men, to be like his hero Kalkor. But now, however ruthless he might have been before, Vurjuk had been given a reputation to live up to. He would be worse than ever, if that was possible.
Meanwhile, Blood Wave sailed on, into the unknown.
5
Her recent long ordeal on camels, Inos decided, had given her a very sentimental view of horses. Camels' gait was a sickening sway, and her joints grew stiff with the unnatural posture. Camels were stupid and bad-tempered and smelly.
But after three days on a mule she discovered she was looking back on both camels and horses with nostalgia. Mules bounced. They raised blisters in unmentionable places. They were stupid and bad-tempered and smelly. The absurd Zaridan robe she wore had never been designed for riding, while her primitive saddle had been stuffed with flints.
After three nights on the bare ground at ever-greater altitudes, she remembered the tents in the desert with much greater affection than she had expected, but a lady never complained, as her aunt had taught her, and if poor old Kade was managing to look on the bright side—and she stubbornly was—then her much younger niece must strive to do much better. Azak expected courage in royalty. So Inos smiled and smiled, and cracked jokes, and once in a while actually deceived herself, as well.
This was, after all, a great adventure. All the rest of her life she would be able to silence a whole dinnertable with the simple words, "When I was in Thume . . ."
The escape seemed to be working. Elkarath had not appeared in their path with a roar of thunder. The brigands of Tall Cranes had not come in pursuit, seeking vengeance. Perhaps they believed their own stories of uncanny horrors preying upon travelers rash enough to venture into Thume, but those horrors had not materialized, either.
The scenery was remarkable, she told herself firmly through chattering teeth.
The gloom-filled forest was redolent with arboreal mystery. Or something. Big trees, anyway. Creepy, haunted.
The ruins had been spectacular—vast tumbled towers and walls of unthinkable antiquity, hidden in forest, beetling over chasms, half buried in silt in the tree-choked valleys. What cities had these been? Who were their brave warriors and fair queens? How long since children had laughed in the deserted courts or horses had plied the empty streets? Now only the wind moved, in blank doorways and crazy staring windows, whispering forgotten names in tongues unknown.
And she was with Azak. Azak was a problem, but he was also a superb protector, and in his strange guise of lover, he had turned out to be extremely good company. Very rarely now did he send shivers of distaste down her spine as he had done sometimes in Arakkaran when he raged at the princes. He was courteous and considerate, and at times even fun. He had a quite astonishing sense of humor, although it was unpredictable, as if it were something he had suppressed in his childhood as unworthy and was now trying to rediscover. And to be wooed by a giant young sultan was certainly a powerful aid to a girl's self-esteem.
Azak as traveling companion—fine. As defender in the wilds—also fine. But Azak in Krasnegar? Azak as husband?
Could this really be the love the God had promised Inos? She must trust in love, They had said. She was inclined to believe now that Azak was, incredibly, truly in love with her. He certainly displayed all the symptoms. She must trust the God, then. She must not listen to the insidious tremors of doubt she felt when she tried to think of Azak ruling the prosaic merchants of Krasnegar.
She tried not to think of Krasnegar at all, especially in the gloomy dark of night. She slept badly, missing Elkarath's sleep spell, and even missing the straw pallets of caravan life. Those had seemed very uncomfortable at first, but a single blanket on bare ground was much worse. So her nights were filled with restless turnings and gloomy thoughts.
Krasnegar, more than likely, had no further need of her now. The wardens would have settled the matter somehow, and there had never been anything Inos could have done to honor the promise she had given her father. So what now, Inosolan?
Had the God been telling her she was destined to love a barbarian and live as sultana of Arakkaran?
The idea of a sultana riding out to hunt in Arakkaran was almost as difficult to grasp as the idea of Azak contentedly spearing white bears in a polar night . . . Well, she must trust in love, as the God had directed.
And trust Azak.
At times the mountain road was a paved highway, snaking through the eerily deserted valleys, its ancient blocks heaved and moved by roots and landslides. At other times there was no visible path at all, and then progress became unbearably slow.
But the third day brought the explorers to the barren crest of the pass, a gravelly desert scrolled with strange patterns of rocks and overlooked by magnificent ice-sheathed mountains. Inos thought she would remember the wind here, more than anything.
Late that third day they began descending along a made road, old and battered but still mostly passable, twisting steeply down a dark and gloomy gorge into the unknown lands of Thume.
Where are you roaming:
O mistress mine! where are you roaming?
O! stay and hear; your true love's coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting;
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man's son doth know.
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
FOUR
Battles long ago
1
Jalon's ordeal on Blood Wave lasted for three days. He sang and played until he was hoarse and his fingers bled, and every second song had to be the "Battle Song of Durthing." Soon Rap knew it as well as Jalon did. He detested every note and every word, hating the callous mockery of honest sailors cruelly murdered; he mourned their wives and children even more. Gods forgive me!
The minstrel obviously wearied of it, also. He tried to vary it, but the crew insisted on the original version. They did accept one minor change—at about the fortieth rendition, Jalon performed the final verse in a perfect mimicry of young Vurjuk's squeaky treble. He would never have dared mock any of the others like that, but they all found this embellishment of the climax even funnier, and thereafter it had always to be done that way. Vurjuk glowered dangerously, and then reluctantly accepted it and pretended to
like it. Apparently mimicry was yet another facet of Jalon's occult genius.
Several times Rap was ordered aft to answer more questions from Kalkor. He tried to deflect danger away from Inos and Krasnegar as well as he could, but the thane detected every deviation from strict truth, no matter how slight. Steadily the toll mounted until Rap was being promised thirty-two strokes from the cat-o'-nine-tails.
He shrugged—which was hard to do convincingly while kneeling at a man's feet—and he tried to put some of his contempt into his still-puffy eyes. "That's a death sentence, then?"
Kalkor looked amused. "I never bluff, lad."
"Then why should I answer any more of your questions? You're going to kill me in about as nasty a way as you can find."
The white eyebrows rose in disbelief. "You underrate my imagination! Besides, I never said you'd have to take all thirty-two strokes at the same time. We can spread them out—one or two a day. You can make a career out of it." The blue-blue eyes glinted. "A seer deserves some consideration."
A truly brave man ought to prefer dying on the first handy tree, rather than be conscripted into a pack of jotunn raiders.
"Thirty-two and counting," Kalkor said. "Next question . . ."
On one topic only could Rap deceive the sharp-witted thane, and there he had no choice. As soon as the questions drew near to the importance of Faerie and the source of magic, Rap's tongue would run away with him and he would start lying like a vagrant horse trader. Those lies Kalkor seemingly accepted, however fantastic they seemed to the man telling them, but of course they sprang from sorcery, the forbiddance laid upon Rap by Oothiana. He could not tell that secret if he tried.
Except for those interrogations, Rap was completely ignored, and so was Gathmor. The sailor was recovering his physical strength, but his mind seemed to have snapped under the strain of captivity, or else from the loss of his ship and family. Dull-eyed and morose, he spent hours curled up, ignoring everything, not even replying to questions. The prisoners were given food and water, but only if they begged for them on their knees. Gathmor either could not or would not do such a thing, so Rap had to beg for two, begging being better than hunger and thirst. If he hoped to live beyond the next landfall, he must hope to escape, and for escape he would need his strength—so he told himself as he groveled, but the sustenance he gained thereby seemed strangely tasteless.
The wind faltered, recovered, veered southerly, then westerly, yet it never failed enough for Kalkor to order rowing; it never again became a full gale. And on the third afternoon, at about the fiftieth repetition of Jalon's battle song, the lookout spied land.
Like Andor's and unlike Rap's, Kalkor's word of power seemed to bring him luck. His ship was bearing down on an unknown lee shore in a spanking wind, but his course brought him within sight of exactly what he wanted, an isolated village.
The land was green, hilly and wooded, if not as lush as Faerie or Kith. Within the stretches of forest, too, lay many stretches of open grassland and even barren rock, which Rap found puzzling. By and large, though, the country seemed fertile—why was it not more populated?
And when Blood Wave was close enough for sharp eyes and farsight to make out details, there was a river mouth coming up ahead, and a cluster of small cottages. None of the buildings could possibly be a barracks, and if there were boats, they must be small. So this was no Imperial outpost with a naval squadron or a garrison, and those were all that raiders need fear.
The jotnar took out their axes for more sharpening, and demanded the most spirited songs the minstrel knew; they began talking themselves up into bloodlust. Rap found the process horrible and in some perverse way fascinating. The pirates never paused to consider that a tiny fraction of the wealth their vessel carried would buy them all the food and shelter they could use—the idea of a peaceful visit never entered their minds. They bragged of how they would kill and kill, rape and rape. They challenged each other to fiendish contests in atrocity. Before long they were so aroused that they could hardly contain themselves. Their eyes rolled in their heads, and some were drooling like imbeciles. Many stripped naked as if even their usual scanty clothing might somehow restrain their actions. And yet this was the crew that had lined up in solid silent discipline along the beach at Durthing—small wonder that the raiders of Nordland were the terror of Pandemia.
Suddenly the minstrel was ordered to cease, although he had been barely audible over the manic babble anyway. Kalkor was up on the half deck beside the helmsman, roaring orders through a trumpet. Men leaped to their benches and the oars were run out. Rap and Gathmor, who had been huddling in the bow, making themselves inconspicuous amid the madness, were ordered aft. Amidships they passed Jalon as he staggered forward, ashen pale under his sunburn, sucking swollen, bleeding fingers. The sail was furled in the bunt; the coxswain began piping a stroke.
Now Rap received the job offer he had been expecting all along. Kalkor stepped to the edge of the tiny half deck and stared down at him with contempt gleaming in too-blue eyes. "Well, faun? I was told you were pilot on that floating brothel your friend ran?"
"Aye, sir."
"Then let us see how you manage a longship. Up here with you. And if you prove yourself useful, I may decide to postpone the flogging for a while. Some of it, anyway."
Seeing no viable alternative, Rap clambered up the little ladder to join the thane and his helmsman on the poop.
"And you—whatever your name is—" Kalkor said to the scowling Gathmor. "Cast an eye at that shore and tell me where we are."
Gathmor was pale and sullen, not the man Rap had known. No jotunn should have taken such a tone, especially him, but he turned obediently to study the landscape and then looked back up at Kalkor.
"I have never seen its like. It is not Kith, nor any part of Sysannaso I have ever visited."
"And not Pithmot, I think," Kalkor said, with a smirk. "So we know where we are, don't we?"
Dragon Reach? It had to be Dragon Reach! A strange warm thrill tingled Rap's skin as he realized the implications of Dragon Reach.
"Vurjuk!" shouted Kalkor.
The gangling young raider was sitting on the nearest bench, wearing nothing but a conical steel helmet and a self-conscious expression. He was unpaired and thus had not put out an oar. He sprang up. "Aye, sir?"
"Get a weapon and keep an eye on this jotunn woman. If he causes any trouble, kill him."
"Aye, aye, sir!" Vurjuk said in an enthusiastic squeak. He stooped to find his battle-ax under the bench. A sword or dagger would have been more appropriate at such close quarters, Rap thought, but the youth hefted the huge ax in one hand and stepped closer to Gathmor. He was a head taller and dangerous in the extreme, yet Gathmor did not even deign to look at him.
Rap, meanwhile, had been studying the approach, both with farsight and with eyes that were gradually recovering from Darad's brutality. Farsight worked better—the sun was close to the horizon, the light tricky.
Either way, the problem was obvious. Hastened along by the rush of the tide. Blood Wave was skirting a long spit of rock and sand, keeping step with the breaking swell that raked it in white plumes of spray. Beyond that sinister barrier beckoned a clear lagoon and a friendly yellow beach, and back of them were trees and a hamlet at the base of steep cliffs—a safe haven, with fresh water and shelter, plus unhindered opportunity to enjoy the bloody sports of raiders.
Up ahead, the narrow hook ended, plunging below the shining water in a frothy confusion of rocks. And beyond them was open channel through which surged the fearsome tide. But the rocks were what sent Rap's heart racing. Deceptive to the eye . . . Deep below the smoothly coiling surface, he saw the frenzied streaming of the kelp. He checked Blood Wave's draft, and it was less than Stormdancer's. But it was enough.
Now he must see what he was really made of.
He was new to the ship, so Kalkor would be wary of him, but another chance might not come again for months, and he might never find a better natural trap. Under the low sun
that tidal rip was barely visible at all to mundane vision. If he could position Blood Wave crosswise in that, then she would whip around and oars would never control her. For several minutes she would be completely at the mercy of the current, and some of those rocky teeth were shallow enough.
Other words of power brought good fortune; perhaps his was going to come through with some at last.
Peep! said the coxswain's pipe.
"Steady as she goes, sir."
Peep!
"The gap's clear?" Kalkor demanded suspiciously.
"Aye, sir. Plenty." And that was true, except that the longship would never reach the opening Rap was looking at. Would that partial lie deceive the jotunn? Rap's heart was racing as it never had. He kept his face turned to the sea. Peep!
Please, Gods! Please let me rid the world of this monster!
Rap would die, too, of course. If the waves did not smash him on the rocks, then he would swim ashore and the other survivors would catch him there. But surely this so-perfect ambush had been provided by the Gods themselves?
God of Sailors, God of Mercy, God of Justice . . . As I seek to aid the Good and shun the Evil, grant me this day courage.
Peep! Peep! Oars creaked against thole pins, heaving Blood Wave closer and closer to that sinister, inconspicuous ripple. Peep!
Twenty strokes should do it.
Swiftly, swiftly to destruction.
Eighteen.
Sixteen.
"You're sure of this, are you, Master Rap?" Kalkor murmured.
"Aye, sir. Quite sure. Steady as she goes, helmsman."
Fourteen.
Twelve.
Then Kalkor raised his trumpet and roared orders—helm hard over, port watch backwater. Blood Wave seemed to stand on her stern as she came about, her bow swinging seaward, away from the waiting race.